Nuclear Power at Priority 1

[Shaymes]

we all know that solar pannle is the free source of electricity and have the highest priority 0.14 but the nuclear reactor consume the uranium cell constantly even its idle so its a waste of fuel if the solar pannle can support the factory, so i think stream turbine needs to be the power source no.1 to max out bevore solar power kick in

[Koub]

What's exactly the difference between :
Nuclear has the priority, and your solar panels' output is wasted
and
Solar panels have the priority and your nuclear's output is wasted
?

[Tev]

What's exactly the difference between :
Nuclear has the priority, and your solar panels' output is wasted
and
Solar panels have the priority and your nuclear's output is wasted
?

The fuel consumption.

Ergo solar panels having higher priority is fine. For advanced "baseload+balancing power source" setups there is power switch and circuit network, you can switch on/off your power sources based on need. Some quick search showed for example this topic

[Zool]

The solar panels can't be turned off, since they produce power as soon as light hits them.

Nuclear reaction starts, as soon as you put uranium inside the reaction chamber.

The big downside of nuclear power is, that it can't be turned on and off quickly, and due to that, its the same here in factorio.

You can maybe automate the input of nuclear pallets in a way, that optimizes the consumption relative to the time, but there is no easy way like "change its priority" - as the poster before stated correctly, this chooses, what type of energy will be wasted, but doesn't stop the reactor from working.

In reality (as far as I know), it takes like 2 days to drive a reactor up to full power once it is down - so factorios way isn't far off the reality.

[Dimanper]

Why is everyone talking about wasting power generated by nuclear reactor? I just don't get it. Just store steam generated from 1 cycle of your reactors in storage tanks, turbines will not waste any energy, they will generate exact amount by demand. And start every cycle of your reactors once you are low on steam. The setup is quite easy and i found it much easier and more efficient in the mid game and *possibly* late-game than building stupid amounts of solar panels.

[Tev]

Why is everyone talking about wasting power generated by nuclear reactor? I just don't get it. Just store steam generated from 1 cycle of your reactors in storage tanks, turbines will not waste any energy, they will generate axact amount by demand. And start every cycle of your reactors once you are low on steam.

Nice! I knew about steam-storage and circuit network-started reactors but I didn't make the connection. That should be easy to design & maintain, thanks for the idea!

[provet]

Why is everyone talking about wasting power generated by nuclear reactor? I just don't get it. Just store steam generated from 1 cycle of your reactors in storage tanks, turbines will not waste any energy, they will generate exact amount by demand. And start every cycle of your reactors once you are low on steam. The setup is quite easy and i found it much easier and more efficient in the mid game and *possibly* late-game than building stupid amounts of solar panels.

I agree with this, also wanted to make this setup, however fuel is so abundant (and with kovarex solution more or less infinite) so It doesn't even matter. Feels like this should be balanced in some way because there's currently no real reason to care. (let fuel be somewhat harder to make, or make it even more scarce. Maybe even make it harder to recycle depleted fuel like in real-life. Also, no radiation?)

[Nasabot]

Its actually a FEATURE that the reactor consumes fuel at a certain rate independent of energy consumption.

[orzelek]

Its actually a FEATURE that the reactor consumes fuel at a certain rate independent of energy consumption.

What it is missing currently potentially is emergency shutdown from overheating if you don't use this heat.

I'm not sure yet how much complex it would make the reactor setups - I didn't build one yet for myself.

[bobingabout]

See, this is what you do.

Fluid storage tanks, use them as a first buffer.
Accumulators, use them as second buffer.

Design your system to make more steam than you need for normal operation, but not quite enough to power all steam turbines.
also have more turbines than you need to power your base at normal. Excess steam is produced and put in tanks, once the accumulators are full of course. When you have a big drain (Say, laser turrets fire and burn your accumulators) the steam flows back into the turbines to keep up.

[BlakeMW]

I do wish it was easier to have Nuclear Power baseline with Coal Power load-following. At the moment if you try and mix nuclear and coal it's hard to get full output out of the steam turbines. There are some clunky power switch solutions w/ accumulator banks as mediators but nothing half as elegant as if steam turbines had priority over steam engines.

(btw i'm aware it's more logical to just make an excess of nuclear power, since nuclear scales up really well, but it'd still be nice to have the tools required for baseline nuclear)

[Mercury044]

what if solar and nuclear were the same level (ie how nuclear and steam are right now?)

[orzelek]

That would cause problems for those that would like to use solar first and supplement with nuclear

I keep steam+accus as backup but main power is fully nuclear with reactor control system based on idea from different thread.
It control steam level and puts fuel into reactor as needed.

[Deadly-Bagel]

My only problem was when I turned nuclear on it's at the same priority as my coal steam engines so in that case I actually WAS burning fuel needlessly because both went to something like 50% production, rather than 60% nuclear 0% coal.

However both sources are essentially steam power so since they're basically the same thing it's hard to give one priority over the other... Obvious solution would be to make Steam Engines lower priority than Turbines but that's more a bandaid than a full fix.

[Ranakastrasz]

I would like this. Still, I would point out that people have been using circuits for ages to allow accumulates to charge during the night without allowing steam engines to waste coal. This is little different.

They even did this before power switches existed, and used belt loops and smart chests....

In any case, Power Switch to cut off the steam engines until accumulators run down.

[BlakeMW]

I would like this. Still, I would point out that people have been using circuits for ages to allow accumulates to charge during the night without allowing steam engines to waste coal. This is little different.

They even did this before power switches existed, and used belt loops and smart chests....

In any case, Power Switch to cut off the steam engines until accumulators run down.

This still works fine for "emergency power" setups, but it's really clunkly for "load following", like say your factory tends to use 50-100MW, and you have 40MW of nuclear and 80MW of Steam, and naturally want the nuclear to always output its 40MW. Probably the least clunky way is using an accumulator bridge, where the nuclear is part of the main grid, and the accumulators are shared between the main and steam grid, so that effectively puts the steam power at the same priority as accumulators. A power switch can also be used to physically join the two networks when the accumulators start depleting, so that the steam engines can add their megawattage to the main grid if the nuke+accumulators aren't providing enough wattage (this is helpful when maximizing firing rate of laser turret batteries). I guess having to use accumulator bridges wouldn't be the worst fate, altough a clean solution which doesn't require 3x as many accumulators as steam engines would be nice.

[bobingabout]

My only problem was when I turned nuclear on it's at the same priority as my coal steam engines so in that case I actually WAS burning fuel needlessly because both went to something like 50% production, rather than 60% nuclear 0% coal.

However both sources are essentially steam power so since they're basically the same thing it's hard to give one priority over the other... Obvious solution would be to make Steam Engines lower priority than Turbines but that's more a bandaid than a full fix.

There are some options available, for example, don't use steam engines at all, Have your nuclear system as a primary, and boilers as a secondary, then use logic and pumps to feed boiler steam into your turbines if it is required... or just a switch to pump steam into your steam engines, like it's a switch.

what we really need is a valve that you can turn on or off, rather than having to use a pump.

[Tym]

I second the request for a circuit-controlled valve. Even for mundane operations such as switching between lubricant production and "heavy-oil-2-solid-fuel" production.

[Ranakastrasz]

A pump is basically a valve already. What is the difference between a pump and the valve you want?

I mean, the only issue is the limited throughput, less of an issue now than it used to be. If you want two directions (no idea why), just use two pumps.

[Deadly-Bagel]

A pump requires electricity, if you've run out of power how will you pump the water to your steam engines?

On the other hand an automatic valve that doesn't use electricity doesn't make much sense either. I guess it could work by tapping into the flow of water, maybe have a battery as a component?

Just, please don't get started on offshore pumps lol there are semi-reasonable explanations for that and it's healthier for gameplay that they don't use fuel.